Absinthe emerges from the shadows

The
Viking guy — red beard, large — opened a plump sack, reached his
freckled hand inside, and scooped up a bunch of twigs and yellow-gray
flowers.

"Do you want to wear a mask?" asked Todd Leopold, one of the
owners of Leopold Bros. distillery in Denver. "This is wormwood. It's
awfully bitter. Get a face full of it and you'll be tasting it for
hours."

Leopold, 38, failed to cover his mouth and nose. Minutes later he downed a soda to help strip away the taste.

Despite the back-of-the- throat burn, Leopold champions the
flavor. He makes absinthe, the stuff that has a ritual surrounding its
preparation and which, according to legend, induces hallucinations and
caused bohemians around the turn of the 20th century to go on murderous
rampages and hold wild orgies. It even gets blamed for Vincent Van
Gogh's decision to cut off his earlobe.

The alleged culprit? Wormwood, a shrub that thrives in alpine
climates — like in the Alps, where absinthe was invented, and in
Colorado.

Absinthe, it turns out, is not some shrub variation of magic
mushrooms. But that didn't stop skittish governments around the world,
including the United States, from banning wormwood-distilled absinthe
in the early 1900s. (See murderous rampages, above.)

But absinthe is back.

"By the end of this year, we will have between 20 and 25 brands
available in the United States," says Brian Robinson, review editor for
The Wormwood Society, a group dedicated to the pleasures of absinthe.
Right now, about eight are available. That's a big jump from this last
year, when exactly zero brands sat on liquor-store shelves and in bars.

You can stop by the Corner Bar in Boulder's Hotel Boulderado
today, in fact, and not only order an absinthe, but watch the bartender
prepare it in a traditional "absinthe fountain," a glass column with
spouts on the bottom.

Bartender Shiara Lango recently filled the fountain with ice,
then water. She poured the Swiss absinthe Kubler into the glass until
it was about one-third full. Then she placed the glass beneath one of
the spouts, set a thin, flat, slotted spoon over the glass, and put a
sugar cube on the spoon. Slowly, she dribbled water from the spout over
the cube, which eventually dissolved. As she added water, the clear
liquid — she was using a "blanche" absinthe, which is clear; other
absinthes are "verte," or green — turned cloudy. When the glass was
full, the drink was ready for consumption.

Taking a match to the sugar cube, and even lighting the
absinthe, has become part of the pop-culture image of absinthe, but
Robinson says that's all wrong.

"There is absolutely no historical evidence that absinthe was
ever set on fire before the 1990s," he says. "It was always a drink you
dilute with water and add sugar if you want." The fire, he says, is
"another way to say, 'Ooh, look at that shiny thing.' "

Fire, sugar, fountain or none of the above, absinthe always
should be diluted with water. On its own, the alcohol content can range
from 53 percent to 72 percent — firewater without the flames.

Now that you can, you should: Buy that bottle of absinthe.
Don't, though, if you dislike the flavor of anise, which is predominant
in absinthe. If you ever have tried pastis, ouzo or Sambuca, you
understand the taste.

But the best absinthes offer more than a wallop of licorice.

"Absinthe has more of a depth of flavor," says Robinson. "The
wormwood adds an alpiney, almost minty, freshness to the drink. It has
a pleasant bitterness, not unlike what you would get in Campari."

Leopold, who grew up in Littleton, opened a brewpub and
distillery in Ann Arbor, Mich. with his brother Scott, and moved the
distillery business to Denver this year. He says absinthe should taste
more floral and bitter than a standard anise drink.

"When you make it properly it smells like an alpine meadow,"
he says at a restaurant recently, where he brought a bottle of his
absinthe verte, poured some of it into a glass, topped it with water,
and offered a sample. Milky clouds roiled through the chartreuse glass
of liquor.

The stuff isn't just for ritualistic quaffing, though. The
Kitchen restaurant in Boulder, for example, serves something they call
"Van Gogh's Breakfast," which includes absinthe, espresso vodka and
Bailey's Irish Cream.

Absinthe has its disciples, but they are a small group. Lango, the bartender at the Corner Bar, isn't sure where it's headed.

"We sold a lot of it when it first came out," she says. "But
when people didn't trip (hallucinate) like they thought they would, we
stopped selling as much of it."